Could the Warsaw Pact have beaten NATO?

[thetourist]

Knowing what we know now, was there ever a time that the W.P. could've beaten NATO in a direct, conventional war? In what era? Was Soviet equipment ever superior or even equal to that of the NATO armies? Was their doctrine ever capable of beating NATO's doctrine during the same time period?

[Timothy OConnor]

Hold on while I get my popcorn (traditional stove-top of course!)



Tim

[kgpanzer]

in reality yes however we would have used nukes..it was in our doctrine to incorporate them if need be....in the end we all loose

[CA-68]

Im happy we never found out. I dont think it would have been the hugely lopsided NATO instant victory a lot of people say it would have been, even if just from the size of the Soviet forces alone. Everyone says NATO equipment and training were much better than their Soviet/Warsaw Pact counterparts, which they probably were, but no matter who would have won, im sure it would have been a huge, lengthy, and mindblowingly costly war. Thankfully all parties involved had the sense to not let it ever happen, in spite of the tense moments. I think NATO could have won, but it sure wouldnt have been over in "72 hours" as i have seen predicted. With luck it might have been over in 72 months.
edited for spelling

[SKeeM]

I would have to say yes. From mid 60's to late 70's for sure. There tanks were equel to ours and they had plenty more. Through out the 80's M1's and Leo's would have made a difference but I still think we would have lost in the end.

There is a game called Steel beats Pro PE. Its 125$ but play that and you will see how hard it would have been to win.

[WHM]

Oh Boy!! My favorute wargame subject!!

This is a big topic to chew on in one bite, but a couple of points.

First it needn't have been a total continent wide, full blown world wide war with tank armies backed up to the Pacific waiting to drive to the channel. It always sounded quite reasonable the scenario where the WP announces a limited war, only attacking West Germany and no nukes. Also the attack is launched only with GSFG and perhaps those in Czech.

The declaration of a limited war might make the smaller countries of NATO hesitant in getting involved. It could also be couched in terms of Frenchmen, Dutch, etc. remeber the Germans of WWII.

I think past events would also show the peace-niks/left wing agitating for no expansion of the war as well. Better Red then dead.

If West Germany was an important part of NATO on the continent, they being occupied would certainly put the west in a very weakened position.

Something about those huge numbers of tanks. I once had an conversation with a armor captain at Ft.Knox back in the late sixties, and he postulated that half their tanks wouldn't start. I don't know what he based this on but I believed he knew something about of which he spoke. Kind of sounds like 1941 dosen't it?

Another thing, just how good were their tanks overall? Over the entire time of the Cold war I saw a LOT of Soviet tanks witheir turrets blown off. Also remeber reading, in ARMOR magazine I think, but don't recall for sure, where the engine used in the T54/55 was based on that used on the T34, which was based on a Ford truck engine. Whole different engine in the T62, T64, T72?

What also has to be considered is the level of training. National Guard armor units fired more rounds a year then the full time Soviet Army in their yearly training cycle.

Others I am sure know more then I and it will be intersting to se what they say.

[DrBig]

NATO didn't really consider a conventional war a possibility until after 1963. Before then, nuclear annihilation would have been a certainty for the USSR, and there is little doubt that Ike would have pressed the button. In the mid to late 60's as the nuke situation evened out & guns became an option again, we entered the period of the AT missile & Reforger.

The Yom Kippur war suggests that Germany could have gone either way. The Egyptian AT missle defense against the IDF counterattack was very successful which was a big plus for NATO, but the Golan held by the slimmest of margins on a tank vs. tank fight and really should have gone to the Syrians had they fully used their capabilities.

However the Soviet military was about as ready to conduct an offensive in Europe as it was in May 1941. Training & equipment maintenance/readiness was never good.

If the Soviets had managed to prep for the attack without NATO discovering it (hard to believe), and achieve surprise, I'd say they would have prevailed in the late 60's into the 70's. With warning, I think NATO would have held. SAMs & AT missles heavily favor the defenders & NATO had plenty. The Soviets would have overrun the frontier, then would have hit a brick wall as German cities became their own versions of Bastogne.

[voltigeur]

In short I agree that 60's, while the US had valuable units tied down in Vietnam, thru the 70's was the best time for The USSR to attack. However the 80's were nver certain. I have won lots of games as the Soviets. The NATO doctrine used in the 70's was just short of pure fantasy.

I taught Soviet tactics and operational priniples below Regiment when I was in the Marines and Army. If properly used the Soviets are good. Too many American players think the Soviets used line up and charge up the middle tactics. When you repeatedly review the FM's and other writings you start to see that the Soviet commanders had more flexability than we give them credit for. While is is a much simpler system than NATO, it is hard to screw up if the Soviet player is ruthless and shoves his first battalions down your throat hard. Get in close and commit to the assault 1500 to 1000 meters and you will over run most M60 & M113 based NATO forces. And you will definitly hurt a Bradly/M1 force.

What changed in the 80's was much more than the introduction of the M1 and Bradly, was the introduction of the Air Land Doctrine. (Basically the US finally pulled it's head out of its ###.) Under this dotrine the US finally started keeping tank companies together as fighting units rather than parceling out individual platoons. the basicoperational unit became the battalion Task force.

Victory in the 80's was still a real possibility for the Soviets becasue we could never replaced our losses. The Soviets would have had units bled white achieving a break through but after that, casualties drop to 20% during exploitation. For the NATO battle plan to work, every one has to be on his best game. It is much harder to screw up than the Soviet system.

The US could have held in Fulda (the terrain almost defends itself) but the open plains to the north were very vunerable. In wargames played by NATO officers, the Soviets drive first west, then south around 5th Corps. Dropping 3 airborne landings to hold the main bridges consistantly ended with the Soviets in posession of Frankfurt in 3 days. That could have very easily unhinged NATO with the West Germany with drawing from the alliance.

What has been learned since the Cold War ended was that the Soviets never intended to invade the west. They were deathly afraid that we would NATO would invade! Both sides believed they would be the defender.

[Cpl_Blakeman]

Thanks for all this information, I was thinking of developing some scenarios with 80s era soviets and this has been very informative. Are there any websites that give more specifics to structure or is that mainly found in books?

At what point did the US fully integrate the M1 into service?

[jb]

At what point did the US fully integrate the M1 into service?

I could be wrong , but I'm thinking 1980,and 1979 would not surprise me...

[WHM]

voltigeur;

Did NATO in the wargames you mention ever win? If so how?

Also, based on your comments on WP strength, why would they be afraid about a NATO invasion?

I can't help but think with their intelligence apparatus and an open society in the west they had to know a NATO invasion was not likely.

Did the upper echelons of command in NATO think they could win? If not then western Europe sounds like the Philippines in 1941. In fact I don't get why their wasn't a big fuss throughout the Cold War, at least from what I am aware of, to reinforce NATO. Unless of course one considers nuclear weapons.

[chrisswim]

At what point did the US fully integrate the M1 into service?

I could be wrong , but I'm thinking 1980,and 1979 would not surprise me...

M1s were first deployed then. What do you mean by fully integrated? When there were only M1s and no M-60s? When M1s were 50% of the deployed MBTs?

[Mk 1]

At what point did the US fully integrate the M1 into service?

I could be wrong , but I'm thinking 1980,and 1979 would not surprise me...

By my recollection, I would place 79/80 as the time for the first appearance of the M1 in USAEUR.

As I recall, it first appeared in one CAV brigade (1st Cav?) and one heavy combat division (24th Inf?).

It was a couple of years before M1Abrams and M2/3 Brads were common across the majority of combat forces of USAEUR.

I believe at least some of the Reforger fly-over reserve and guard units were still exptected to draw stocks of M60A3s and M113s through at least the late '80s.

It was also some time before the doctrine for their employment settled down.

I would place the benchmark date to say they were "fully integrated" into service as the adoption of the Division '86 re-org, which occurred, interestingly enough, in about 1986 (as I understand). That was the point at which the doctrinal shift from attrition warfare to maneuver warfare (a la the Airland Battle doctrine) was codified as being force-wide.

There were interim steps. I think the Cav units had the whole maneuver business down well before the heavy divisions, as they had always had a mobility-based mindset.

I have heard of operational commanders (division and brigade levels) who adopted the new maneuver doctrines quite quickly, and so of units that may have been well ahead of this curve. I have also heard of some that were highly resistant to the changes, and even when re-equipped with Abrams and Brads still drilled in what were essentially positional warfare tactics well after the re-org.

Some commanders were still debating the AirLand concepts after the live-fire demonstration we call Operation Desert Storm.

Or so I have heard (from many tankers of that era) and read. But I was not in service, so my view is 100% second- or even third-hand.

[ferret701]

This is one of the more interesting questions of the last 40 years.

A know a lot about the situation in the 1980s, but very little about the period before that. I've been working with a group over at Tank-Net.org on a NATO 1989 OOB for almost two years now, and it is now very comprehensive. It is now available on my web site, [url]www.microarmormayhem.com[/url].

In general, NATO become stronger as the 1980s progressed while the Soviet became weaker. NATO's economies during the period were generally growing well, while he Soviet economy was stagnant at best. NATO defense spending generally rose both in real times and as a percentage of GDP.

NATO also grew more unified during the period. Greece and Turkey became more active members and, to some extent, managed to put aside some of their grievances. Spain become more active (although was never fully committed to NATO militarily in the same sense as other members). France effectively, if not officially, came back to the fold, and developed close defense ties with the West Germans.

The situation for the Warsaw Pact was effectively the opposite. The troubles in Poland during the early 1980s were effectively kept from breaking out into the open, but they continued to simmer just below the surface. As the economies of the Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members slowed, so did their military modernization efforts and their ability (and political willingness) to commit significant resources to their militaries.

On the military front, NATO switched from primarily an infantry force to primarily a mobile one, in organization, equipment and doctrine. While the alliance was still officially wedded to forward defense (for domestic German political reasons), it made a far greater effort to focus on defense in depth.

I would not want to speculate who would win in a general conflict -- it would be heavily dependent on the cause of the war, the length of the mobilization period for each side, and the overall political situation. That said, as the decade progressed, NATO became significantly more competitive.

A few things I find interesting:

The first is that NATO was far larger than the Warsaw Pact, both economically and demographically. There were about 290 million Soviets along with 103 million more in the Warsaw Pact. There were 248 million Americans, and another 410 million in other NATO nations. Depending on who you believe and how you work the numbers, NATOs economic power was something like 3 or 4 times that of the Warsaw Pact.

NATO was also spending only a small fraction of its GDP on the military; probably averaging about 6% during the decade. Glanz, in The Collapse of Soviet Military Power (may be wrecking the title) estimates that the USSR was spending somewhere around 30% IIRC on security. The net effect -- in any long war (or a conflict preceded by a longer period of tension) it was relatively easy for NATO to radically up its military spending, but very difficult for the Soviets to do so.

On a smaller scale, the Soviets had four problems that would probably have been magnified dramatically had a war last several weeks or more:

-- They lacked a class of professional NCOs (there were warrant officers, but very few). As units took casualties, there would have been very little glue to rebuild them with -- no class of long-term professionals who could step in and make things work.

-- Soviet divisions were far smaller than their NATO equivalents in personnel. There were very few rear-area units to cannibalize to fill up combat units with replacements, and no dedicated system for rebuilding units in the short term. Units that burned out would stay that way. In contrast, the Germans had an excellent replacement system that, combined with their excellent battlefield recovery and repair ability, would have given their units some serious staying power.

-- The Soviets would have to dedicate significant numbers of units to other fronts -- at least some divisions would have to keep an eye on China; it is likely that Bulgaria would need rapid reinforcement; and troops would be required for both occupation duty and for keeping an eye on their Warsaw Pact allies.

This is not to say NATO did not have significant disadvantages, but they pale by comparison.

I could go on and on, but I'll cut it off there.

[Timothy OConnor]

In general, NATO become stronger as the 1980s progressed while the Soviet became weaker.

According to Dunningan's book on modern war in 1980 Russia was unable to mobile its reserve divisions on Poland's border in response to the quickening collapes of Communism in Poland. He writes, "That mobilization had to be called off." He also notes that divisions from Soviet Asia mobilized for service in Afghanistan in 1979 performed "with a notable lack of enthusiasm and effectiveness."

He also has an interesting discussion on the concentration of firepower at different unit levels and compares the Soviet approach (more contralized) with the NATO approach (more distributed). His fundamental take on the issue is that centralized firepower was less costly and more effiecient and, in some ways, flexible enough to meet most battlefield requirements. The distributed approach was far less efficient, even extravegant, but was possible due to the relative wealth of the west.

Note that while this is also reflected in relative effectiveness of communications systems, it's primarily an issue of putting your limited firepower resources where they're most needed. To do this the command and control doctrine needs to be fairly responsive, flexible, and driven by initiative, all charateristics typically lacking in our miniature wargame versions of Soviet forces but clearly evident in WWII, Afghanistan, and Chechnya.

Tim